Archive for the ‘Kenneth Bernstein’ category

Education: LISTEN TO THIS MAN!

August 27th, 2009

How do you personally feel about the future of American education?

I’m panicked, I’m worried. I think if we continue along the path that we’re going, our greatest days are behind us. But, I still believe we can turn it around. That’s why I’m still in the classroom, and I’m gonna do my best. But as long as we embrace “testing is everything,” and as long as we keep shrinking art programs and physical education programs, we’re not in a good place. Those are the things that inspire kids to do great things, so I hope we keep enlarging them, not shrinking them.

The words are those of Rafe Esquith, at the end of an interview currently freely available from Teacher Magazine in a piece called Lighting Fires With Rafe Esquith. Esquith is one of America’s great teachers, winner of many awards, a notable author. The key is the impact he has upon his students.

Equith teachers 5th grade at an inner city school, Hobart Elementary, in Los Angeles. He has his kids actually performing (passionately) Shakespeare. He is more than a little “unconventional.” Perhaps the best description of what he does can be seen in the title of his 2nd (and best-selling) book (published 2 years ago): Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56.

I am going to strongly suggest that if you have any interest in education and meaningful teaching – as parent, educator, policy maker, or simply citizen/taxpayer – that you take the link to the interview and print it down and save it — NOW. The link will expire at some point, and you will not want to lose access to this insightful piece.

Let me offer a few more exchanges from the interview, with some observations and commentary of my own.

I think the absolute key is that learning, the education of a child, is a long process, and we are now in the middle of a fast food society. We want instant everything. We even have books now like Algebra Made Easy and Shakespeare Made Easy. But I want teachers and parents to remember that it’s not easy! To be good at anything—anything!—takes thousands and thousands of hours of patient study, and I want people to know that when kids make mistakes or have setbacks, we don’t need to jump all over them for every little thing. This is a long process. I’m hoping that from the lessons of Lighting Their Fires people will understand that I’m trying to teach things that kids will remember after they’ve left my classroom, not just for the test at the end of the year.

not just for the test at the end of the year – and yet the Obama administration wants to tie merit pay for teachers to student performance on those same end of year tests, rather than finding other ways of examining the effects teachers have upon their students. I suspect that anyone who would walk into Esquith’s classroom in Room 56 at Hobart would immediately grasp the positive effect he has upon students, regardless of any results either on end of year tests examined separately, or the growth shown as compared either to last year’s tests or tests at the beginning of the year.

Esquith talks about reminding teachers of the importance of being themselves. Let me offer a bit of this section, right after he mentions other teachers thanking him for that.

Because a lot of people are telling the teacher not to be yourself. That we’re all supposed to be exactly the same. We’re not. In a country that says it’s supposed to celebrate diversity, we’re not! And that’s what I want those burned-out teachers to remember. Be yourself. You’re valuable, you’re important, and you’re making a difference, even though maybe you’re in a school that doesn’t appreciate what you’re doing. It’s a thankless job, it really is. But when you do it well, it’s a fun job.

It is not only a “fun job,” it is absoluting energizing, especially on those occasions when you “hit a home run” and find a way of really connecting with the students.

Here I note that I have insisted my student teachers learn how to be themselves in front of the adolescents in my classroom, who can quickly determine if a teacher is being something different, that is, is in “teacher mode” – for many, that will serve as a barrier, because what the students really hunger for is someone who respects them enough to be genuine with them. By the way, as we mourn the loss of Ted Kennedy, perhaps we should note that so much of the response to him was that he was very much himself, which was a very caring person, in his interactions even with those who opposed him politically, which might be why he was able to find common ground on occasion and become close friends with the likes of Orrin Hatch. Effective teaching also involves the building of relationships through trust, the showing of genuine care. If in fact your real self is not caring towards the students in your charge, I strongly suggest you find another occupation, no matter how knowledgeable about your subject matter you may be.

Esquith talks about the number of former students who come back to his classroom and provide positive role models for his current students. Here I note that I teach mainly 10th graders, and I see a similar effect – they have older siblings who come back to me for college recommendations, or neighbors, teammates, those on the bus who will share their experiences in my classroom. I will not claim I have anything near the impact Esquith does – his students are younger, and for many his is the first such encounter with a caring and challenging adult not related to them. There are many great teachers in our school, and I am fortunate that almost all of my students have already had at least one such encounter before they enter my classroom.

Esquith also talks about how his classroom works:

The idea that kids don’t like school is a myth. Kids love school when it’s fun and interesting. They don’t like school when it’s boring. But you let them do things that are relevant, like play in a rock band, as we do in my classes, and capture their imagination. I think that’s what people see in my classroom─there’s a great energy level, an atmosphere of warmth and humor and hard work all mixed together.

Note especially those last words: an atmosphere of warmth and humor and hard work all mixed together – that combination encourages students who are struggling to keep trying. If I am going to challenge my students to go further, I have to build the trust, lighten the burden with humor, affirm that I know they can do it.

A couple of quotes without comments:

I do think that the goal should be that we’re going to give every child the opportunity to be the best they can be. Right now, we’re not doing that. And as I always tell the kids, “It’s not my job to save your soul, but it’s my job to give you an opportunity to save your own soul.” I can’t make a kid smarter or better, but I can give them the opportunity to become that and show them how to do that. That’s my job, and that’s a parent’s job─creating opportunities.

I’m really hoping is that teachers, when they keep growing, they can grow into themselves. They’re so busy following the script, they stop being themselves. I think if the teacher’s a great cook, then I hope she cooks with the kids as part of the day! Work it into the lesson plan! Because that’s your passion… the good news is, in my classroom, it is absolutely my room. Even though we follow all the standards, my three particular passions, which are baseball, rock & roll and Shakespeare are all a part of that classroom. And it works really well, because I’m good at showing kids how to do those things.

Rafe Esquith is an extraordinary teacher, one of the nation’s best. And yet, instead of learning from teachers like him when we make our policy, too often we listen to economists and politicians, we are far too inclined to try to standardize – and not just in how we test. When teachers are empowered – as Esquith is and as I have been fortunate enough to be by 5 principals in three different schools – they commit themselves to their students despite the barriers and obstacles, despite the restriction s of external testing and pacing guides (which often make no sense even as they are supposed demonstrate that we have ‘covered” the material for which the students will be held “accountable”).

We need to remember that we are teaching students, a collection of individual, unique personalities, not a class or a subject if by phrasing in the latter fashion we lose sight of those individuals. We need to be able to adjust our instruction to the persons before us.

I have a decreasing amount of hair. I’m not sure how much I can afford to lose by setting it on fire. But I know Esquith is right – it is by bringing one’s own passion to the task of learning with one’s students that I am most effective as a teacher. It is also by providing an environment that the passions with which the students arrive can somehow be included within the classroom as well. Esquith is an elementary teacher – he has his students for the entire day. I teach 6 periods, each of 45 minutes, each with a different collection of students, currently with up to 36 in the room at one time (and that will expand today). It is somewhat different, but still fundamentally the same – I may have less time to accomplish that, and far more specific content with which to connect them, but they are still unique individuals with different backgrounds and interests. I make clear I am passionate and invite them along for the ride.

along for the ride – that means I am traveling that road with them. That is one fundamental concept of teaching which Esquith may not explicitly state, but which underlies his entire approach, and with which I strongly agree.

Esquith will be the first to tell you he does not have all the answers. And perhaps his words may raise more questions, to which he would almost certainly say “good!” It is by asking questions that we can reexamine our thinking and improve our own actions.

Which is why this post has the title that it does.

Education: LISTEN TO THIS MAN!

Peace.

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Posted in Kenneth Bernstein, Uncategorized

A teacher explains why she is leaving

August 9th, 2009

originally posted at Daily Kos

It happens all the time. People come into teaching, full of enthusiasm, sometimes accompanied by real talent. But they do not stay. After all, we lose half of those entering into teaching before they start their sixth year, the bulk of those before they start their fourth. There are lots of reasons. Some, like those entering through programs like Teach for America, never intended to make a career of it. Others find they cannot handle the pressures, or live on the salaries.

I could give you statistics, but that is often not effective. I remind you that Stalin said that the death of millions was a statistic, but the death of an individual was a tragedy. So let5′s look at a tragedy, the death of a teaching career, after the magical three-year mark, of a gifted teacher who is able to explain why she is leaving.

Sarah Fine puts it bluntly in the title of her Washington Post op ed: Schools Need Teachers Like Me. I Just Can’t Stay. Please read the whole thing. It won’t take long. Then we’ll talk.

It is rarely one reason when a person who is dedicated to the ideal of teaching chooses to abandon the profession. Money is certainly part of it. The job can be hard, and the term “burnout” is often applicable, but not because of the difficulty of the job, at least, the part of the job that involved dealing with students, even the most difficult students.

Fine acknowledges that her own story is not unique, writing

In 2005, the year I started teaching, nearly a third of new teachers in the District of Columbia were recent college graduates who had enrolled in Teach for America or the D.C. Teaching Fellows program. Statistics suggest that many of these recruits have already moved on. Nationally, half of all new teachers leave the profession within five years, and in urban schools, especially the much-lauded “no excuses” charter schools, turnover is often much higher.

One reason not directly addressed in Fine’s piece is that most urban charter schools are not unionized. For better or worse, that means that the teaching staff lacks the protections a union can give them, making them subject to abusive or unrealistic demands by administrations. We see this in the paragraph following what I have already quoted from Fine, who has already told us that she uses the term “burnout” as as a kind of shorthand:

When I talk about the long hours, for example, what I mean is that, over the course of four years, my school’s administration steadily expanded the workload and workday while barely adjusting salaries. More and more major decisions were made behind closed doors, and more and more teachers felt micromanaged rather than supported. One afternoon this spring, when my often apathetic 10th-graders were walking eagerly around the room as part of a writing assignment, an administrator came in and ordered me to get the class “seated and silent.” It took everything I had to hold back my tears of frustration.

Here I would interject that some of what troubled her about her own situation is becoming increasingly the case in public schools that are unionized as well. The idea of micromanagement – especially in ways that interfere with the teachers’ ability to really connect with the students, are among the most troubling problems teachers encounter. We see it in canned lessons, rigid pacing guides used to require everyone to be on the same page at the same time.

The idea that decisions are made behind closed doors is also something we all encounter. Or, if the doors are not closed, the voices of those of us in the classroom are not included when the decisions are being made. Fine writes about spending weeks with fellow teachers revising a curriculum proposal only to see it rejected by her administration without even looking at it. We see this now on a national scale: on July 27 I posted Education: what is wrong with this picture? in which I pointed out that the panels involved in drafting new national standards for English and Math and the support panels included a grand total of one classroom teacher and no participation by the professional organizations for the two curricular areas.

Fine is a gifted writer. She acknowledges her frustration in not being able to reach all her students, and worries about those who fall through the cracks. As a teacher myself, that draws me to her, because even after 14 years I still wrestle with the same worries. That demonstrates the kind of caring that is usually essential to reaching the most difficult students. And reading the description of the classroom, where we realize that she herself – not her school – provided the library of young adult literature for her students, that she honored them by posting their efforts at poetry, it is easy to see her as the kind of teacher who draws students to what she asks, who is effective in having her students go beyond their comfort levels. And even while expressing pride in her students effective performance on the required external test does not make up for the sense of failing students who did not succeed.

That kind of frustration can break a lesser teacher, even one with the support of her administration. If one enters the profession wanting to make a difference,or as Fine puts it,

it only seemed right that I “give back” after spending 22 years in a suburban, Ivy League bubble

those failures can cut very deeply, that can be devastating to on’e moral and sense of purpose. Even as one struggles with the sense of failure for those one did not reach, being able to persist, to try to adjust, to maintain one’s effort on behalf of those students one is reaching, is critical if we are going to make a difference in the lives of the people served by the kind of school in which Fine taught. Note that I said people, not children or students. In many cases it is by what we do for those in our classroom that also inspires and sustains the adult members of their families, who seeing possibilities opening up for their children are inspired to overcome inertia and despair and themselves try to make a difference in their own lives.

What Fine describes as most devastating is the lack of respect for the profession. She reminds us that

Teaching is a grueling job, and without the kind of social recognition that accompanies professions such as medicine and law, it is even harder for ambitious young people like me to stick with it.

Here the problem is more widespread than many are willing to recognize. All professions have underachievers, and/or people who perhaps should be encouraged to leave the profession. That is certainly true of elected legislators, it is very true of lawyers (remember, that profession includes the likes of Orly Taitz), we have seen how true it was of bankers, and far too many in medical fields are more concerned with the money they make than with the real health of their patients. Yet no other profession is subject to the constant drumbeat of criticism, to the palpable lack of respect for the profession. Even a president who claims to be committed to improving education is prone to the kind of rhetoric that paints with brush strokes far too broad.

It is true in teaching, as in other fields, that some are far more effective in reaching their students, in having those students succeed no matter what measure you use – score on external tests, persistence in doing work, developing the ability to work independently in the domain. Our approach should not be to incentivize those teachers, but rather to use them to help understand how and why they are more successful, and thus to empower other teachers to greater success. Instead we see arguments for merit pay for teachers based at least in part on performance on test scores, including statements and actions by our President and his Secretary of Education, ignoring all the evidence both in education and in other fields of the ineffectiveness – and sometimes the destructiveness – of merit pay as a means of improving overall performance in the field.

Our Secretary of Education is not only insisting upon using student test performance as a key factor in making such merit pay decisions, he is also insisting upon states expanding the use of charter schools, despite a clear lack of evidence that they are any more effective overall in teaching students, as a recently released study at Stanford made clear.

Fine taught in a charter school. It is dangerous to make policy by anecdote, and in referencing her experience, it is not my intent to do so. But she illustrates very clearly that merely setting up a charter does not overcome many of the problems inherent in education, particularly in situations such as inner city minority neighborhoods. Students will arrive absent the skills and knowledge one should be able to expect at that grade level. Issues of family dysfunction, poverty, nutrition and health, are not overcome by magically doing away with the normal structure of the traditional public school, including having unions to protect the rights of the teachers. Many charters are able to select out the more difficult to educate students, or the ones whose families are not seen as being as “supportive” of the school and its mission. The hours worked by their teachers are often not sustainable, which also contributes to high turnover of staff which undercuts the effectiveness of the school.

Some charters are more successful, especially those able to develop and maintain a clear sense of mission, one which is a product of a group effort of the entire staff, not just of one person. The flexibility that allows that to happen in a charter is key. And perhaps we should acknowledge that, and rather than insisting states merely allow or even mandate more charters, start trying to give a similar flexibility to “traditional” public schools so that they can meet the needs of the students in their classes.

In any case, teaching is a key to the success of our students. We have known about the high turnover among teachers for many years. It has been an important issue since before I began my own Master of Arts in Teaching program in 1994, and it has gotten worse in the decade and a half since. If we cannot develop and maintain a sufficient core of competent or better teachers, we will not overcome the crisis of education that we currently face, which is far more than the issue of international economic competition, an issue which receives too much attention at the expense of things far more basic. We will not be educating our young people to be participants in the representative democracy we pretend to be. We will not be empowering each student to pursue that which most energizes them for work or even for avocation. We will not be equipping our students to be able to learn on their own, to be willing to take intellectual risks.

All of that requires teachers. I am about to start my 15th year of teaching. I am still learning how to be more effective for the students in my care. By all counts I am at least a pretty good teacher, more than minimally competent even on my occasional bad days – and remember, teachers are human, and like those in other fields we have days where we are not as effective.

Fine closes her piece like this:

Having a base of teachers who teach for more than a token few years is critical to school reform. It helps principals and school leaders develop trusting relationships with teachers. It helps teachers collaborate with one another. Most of all, it helps students. A teacher with experience is not always a good teacher, but a good teacher is always better after a few years of experience. As my former principal not-so-subtly put it: “The kids don’t need one-year wonders. There is no such thing as a one-year wonder.”

Four-year wonders are better than nothing, but still not enough.

We need to listen to the voices of teachers. Effective organizations regularly do exit interviews of those leaving, hoping thereby to be able to make adjustments to improve conditions for those remaining. We do not as a regular practice do this in education. We should. Learning why people leave is critical information.

Sarah Fine has done her own exit interview. She has taken the time and used her expressive gifts to explain her decision to leave teaching. He piece appears in the newspaper serving our national capital city. It is unfortunately that so many involved in educational policy are not in town to read it.

But we can. We can pass it on. We can reflect upon what we learn from her, and perhaps thereby from many like her who leave the teaching profession far too soon.

Peace.

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A look at Chicago schools under Duncan

May 29th, 2009

By Kenneth Bernstein, Daily Kos

also posted elsewhere

Every now and then it is useful to step back from the hype and the spin and see what people on the ground have to say about important issues. In the case of education policy, we should not forget that George Bush gave us Rod Paige and the so-called Texas Miracle (which never was) as the argument for passing into law No Child Left Behind.

Obama has chosen his basketball buddy Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education. Duncan is an exemplar of several things (1) mayoral control of the school system; (2) a non-educator put in charge of education. The track record of both is not particularly sanguine.

But rather than merely my saying so, perhaps you will take the words of someone on the ground in Chicago. Wade Tillett is a Chicago public school parent and teacher who also blogs about Chicago schools. The piece below appeared on his Bubble Over Network, the name of which comes from the ubiquitous use of bubble-in mass produced tests. I have Wade’s permission to reproduce the entire piece, and I will add a few comments of my own at the end.

Flunk, retain, drop out

Written by Wade on May 27th, 2009

Soon scores from a small portion of the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) will come back.
The booklet sent out with ISAT says “No person or organization shall make a decision about a student or educator on the basis of a single test.” (1)
Despite this, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) trusts this test to override our own teachers in deciding the future of our children.
For third, sixth and eighth graders, our promotion policy automatically flunks at least one in four children based on a thirty or forty question test. (2)
At the end of summer school, CPS is five times more likely to retain a child for the next year if they are African-American than if they are white. (3)
By retaining a student, CPS increases that child’s chance of dropping out by 29%. (4)
Chicago Public Schools spends $100 million dollars every year on this policy. (5)
Extensive research shows that it DOES NOT WORK. Repeating a grade does not help children succeed. (4)
Why do we continue to threaten eight-year-olds and tell third-graders they are failures? Why do we make students cry, throw-up, and finally quit?
Chicago Public Schools should use the $100 million it spends every year on holding back kids to instead provide what students really need: caring professionals with the time and resources to find out what works for each of them. Our children need advocates, not inflexible policies spit out of a machine.
CPS should stop using standardized test scores to override all other considerations in making student grade promotion decisions. I encourage anyone who agrees to sign the petition. And I encourage other parents to contact Parents United for Responsible Education if your child is forced to go to summer school.

1. 2009 ISBE ISAT Professional Testing Practices for Educators booklet

2. CPS policy sends any student below the 24th percentile to summer school.

3. http://pureparents.org/data/files/retentionreport09.pdf

4. http://www.fairtest.org/chicago-research-criticizes-retention-test-driven-improvement

5. $10,000 per student per year times approximately 10,000 students retained

Here’s what is scary. Chicago is the model for what Duncan wants to do to American education. What has been done in Chicago since Richie Daley got mayoral control of the schools, first under Paul Vallas (who also imposed his “magic” on Philadelphia and New Orleans, but who is really interested in elective public office) and then under his one-time assistant Arne Duncan, has NOT addressed issues like the achievement gap that plagues poor, minority students. There is extensive evidence in the peer-reviewed literature of the negative consequences of retention, and that is without even considering the scope of retention system-wide in Chicago. The use of one-shot high-stakes multiple choice tests – which may or may not truly be standardized – to make the determination of who is retained is contrary to what the psychometricians responsible for the creation of the tests say is appropriate use of their tests.

The idea that anyone at below the 24th percentile is automatically required to attend summer school is also troublesome, unless there is an independent determination that at such a level the student is unable to function at the appropriate level for the next grade. It seems like an arbitrary cutoff without sufficient justification. Even if one presumes that the test is an accurate measurement of meaningful skills and knowledge, by that rationale we are assuming that just under 1/4 of all of our students are not succeeding sufficiently in regular school settings. If that is true, perhaps the answer is to address the deficiencies in the schooling received during the school year. Of course, the track record in Chicago has been instead to reconstitute troublesome schools, then not include their performance in the evaluation of the system on grounds that it is a “new school” so comparison with previous years’ test scores is meaningless. Thus the Chicago Public Schools mask the lack of progress under many years of mayoral control.

That we are doing this to relatively young children, marking a significant portion as failures early in the school career is an abomination – the failure is not theirs, it is ours, all of us, for allowing this to occur.

I will not attempt to rationalize the disparate impact of these policies by race. Wade points that out clearly.

Testing, then analyzing test results and applying punitive sanctions has not yet proven successful within cities and state nor across the nation. While some advocates of the NCLB approach brag on “improved” scores at the elementary level in NAEP (the National Assessment of Educational Progress), such improvement is tenuous at best. The amount of improvement at the elementary level is less than in the previous cycle, that previous cycle having covered a period most of which occurred before NCLB. There is no improvement demonstrated at the upper grades. And even in the lower grades, the so-called achievement gap has not closed – minority children still lag behind as they did before – for this it is worth remembering that the ostensible purpose of NCLB was to close those gaps, to ensure that poor and minority children were not shortchanged on their education.

People in Chicago have been trying to warn the rest of us since before Obama became a candidate for president. Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) has done yeoman’s work in documenting the real story behind the supposed success of the various initiatives in Chicago.

Wade Tillett’s piece is but one of a series of alarums to which we should pay heed. As Arne Duncan continues on his listening tour around the nation, people should be prepared to challenge him on the real record in Chicago.

In the last presidency we learned how badly our nation’s educational system could be damaged by propagating a failed model. I fear we confront a similar challenge right now.

Learn, and then speak out, for the future of our public schools.

Peace.

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Posted in Kenneth Bernstein

Tags: arne Barack Obama Chicago mayoral control PURE Rod Paige Wade Tillett

Brown v Board of Education after 55 years

May 17th, 2009

By Kenneth Bernstein, originally posted at Daily Kos

Fifty-five years ago today the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously issued Earl Warren’s opinion in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, in which it stated unequivocally that

Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

And yet even after 55 years the promise of the Brown decision we still have not overcome what is effectively a system of educational apartheid.

Below the fold I am offering the text of a piece by Sam Chaltain, the National Director of The Forum for Education and Democracy. I am going to urge you to read carefully his words. I will offer a few additional comments of my own, but the primary purpose of this diary is to make Sam’s statement more widely known.

Doesn’t Every Child Deserve a High Quality Education?
By Sam Chaltain

On May 17, America will mark the 55th anniversary of Thurgood Marshall’s historic victory in Brown v. Board of Education. If Marshall were alive, however, he would urge us to stop celebrating 1954 and start accepting responsibility for our complicity in the creation of a “separate but equal” education apartheid system – with one method of instruction for the poor, and another for the privileged.

In theory, the Brown decision represents the most hopeful strains of the American narrative: working within a system of laws to extend the promise of freedom, more fairly and fully, to each succeeding generation. “In the field of public education,” the unanimous Court wrote, “the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” and the opportunity to learn “is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” The Chicago Defender proclaimed May 17, 1954 as “the beginning of the end of the dual society in American life and the system of segregation that supports it.” Marshall himself remembered feeling “so happy I was numb.”

In practice, integrated schools today are as much of a dream now as they were then, and the subject of segregation has all but disappeared from the national conversation about education reform. Worse still, many of the newest and most promising schools in our nation’s cities are actually increasing the racial stratification of young people and communities – not lessening it.

Providing ‘separate but equal’ facilities, it seems, has once again become an acceptable justification for allowing an inequitable schooling system to exist. In this system, some schools receive ample funding, while others scrape by. Some schools are filled with passionate, experienced educators, while others are flooded with passionate, inexperienced rookies. And while one child is being taught that the key to success is finding the right (multiple-choice) answer to other people’s questions, another is learning that success comes from finding his voice and discovering his rightful place in the world.

Which child is more likely to do well in life, and in a democratic society?

Ostensibly, this inequity was what the Court ended in 1954. But legal changes tend to outpace social changes, and so in 1973 the Court was again asked to intervene, this time when a group of poor Texas parents claimed that their state’s reliance on local taxes to determine per-pupil expenditures violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. A state court agreed, but the U.S. Supreme Court, in a narrow 5-4 decision, reversed.

The unfair distribution of resources, Justice Potter Stewart conceded, “has resulted in a system of public education that can fairly be described as chaotic and unjust. It does not follow, however, that this system violates the Constitution.”

Justice Lewis Powell agreed. “Though education is one of the most important services performed by the state, it is not within the limited category of rights recognized by this Court as guaranteed by the Constitution.” If it were, Powell conceded, “virtually every State will not pass muster.”

For Justice Marshall, a sitting member of the Court he had stood before two decades prior, that was precisely the point. “The Court concludes that public education is not constitutionally guaranteed,” he wrote, even though “no other state function is so uniformly recognized as an essential element of our society’s well being.”

Marshall understood that without equal access to a high-quality public education, democracy doesn’t work. “Education directly affects the ability of a child to exercise his First Amendment rights,” he explained. “Education prepares individuals to be self-reliant and self-sufficient participants in society. Both facets of this observation are suggestive of the substantial relationship which education bears to guarantees of our Constitution.”

After so many years and so little real change, something new – perhaps even something drastic – needs to be done.

What if Powell and Stewart were wrong? What if we made the guarantee of a high-quality public education our nation’s 28th Constitutional Amendment? Is that the game-changer we need to make the promise of Brown a reality, 55 years later?

Sam Chaltain is the National Director of The Forum for Education & Democracy, a national education “action tank” committed to the public, democratic role of public education — the preparation of engaged and thoughtful democratic citizens.

(follow Sam on Twitter)

Let me start by noting again the words of Justice Powell, that Though education is one of the most important services performed by the state, it is not within the limited category of rights recognized by this Court as guaranteed by the Constitution. And still today, more than a quarter century after that opinion in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, it is still true, as Powell wrote in 1972, that virtually every State will not pass muster.

Some states guarantee a free and appropriate public education in their state constitution, although such guarantees were often from a time when such education was only through the 8th grade.

We have come out of a two-term presidency where the focus on No Child Left Behind as the supposed means of addressing the inequity that is still pervasive in America’s schools has had the unfortunate effect of narrowing the educational opportunities for many children of color. The recent scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) show that while scores at the elementary level have risen somewhat (albeit less than in the previous periodic assessment covering a time when NCLB had only briefly been in effect), the gap between white and black had not closed and at the high school level there had been no significant change in performance. In short, we are still leaving many children behind. And in the meantime we are robbing them of access to the arts, which are not tested, and incredibly to history and civic education, which also are not part of the calculation of Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB, and hence get ignored inr restricted in favor of more time to raise scores on those tests whose results do get included.

I teach government. Thus the words of Thurgood Marshall in dissent are to me quite relevant: Education directly affects the ability of a child to exercise his First Amendment rights. Our students need to understand those writes to be fully participating citizens helping shape their own future and the future of this nation. Marshall recognized this: Education prepares individuals to be self-reliant and self-sufficient participants in society. Both facets of this observation are suggestive of the substantial relationship which education bears to guarantees of our Constitution.

But these ideas are not new now, nor were they when Marshall expressed them in 1972. Let me offer a selection from Warren’s opinion in Brown that remains as relevant today as it was 55 years ago:

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

We must remember that despite the unanimity of the Brown decision there was strong resistance. I write these words from the Commonwealth of Virginia, which after the succeeding Brown 2 decision of 1955, which said that segregated school systems must be integrated with all deliberate speed chose a path of “massive resistance” repeatedly articulated in the editorial pages of a major newspaper, the Richmond News Leader, penned by the very articulate editor James Jackson Kilpatrick. We often forget that Topeka was only one of 5 districts involved in the Brown case. There were two parallel decisions, because one case came from our national capital which since it was note a state had to be decided on somewhat different legal grounds as it was in Bolling v Sharpe. The other states, besides Virginia, included South Carolina and Delaware. The Virginia situation is illustrative of how difficult it has been to achieve racial equity in public schools. The General Assembly had allowed the closing of public schools that were to be integrated, but this was ruled unconstitutional in 1959, whereupon the General Assembly repealed compulsory school attendance and left it to local option. That meant either integrated public schools or no public schools. Prince Edward County, which had been the subject of the Virginia case combined into Brown, chose to be the sole Virginia district that abandoned public education. From May 1, 1959 until in 1964 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled unconstitutional governments making grants to private (segregated) schools, Prince Edward County had no public schools.

Too many do not know the history of that time. The decision 55 years ago today did not magically erase an era of racial discrimination in education. While it might no longer be de jure on racial grounds today, the inequity of schools serving primarily or exclusively minority populations is not so much better, despite the various federal and state efforts that have been made. The process of of addressing the failures of such schools has inextricably become a political football used by some to advance causes that have little to do with the meaningful education of children whose economic situations give them less access to educationally related activities outside of school, and whose in-school education has increasingly been narrowed to preparation for tests to “prove” we are offering an education, even if the unstated purposes on the part of many advocates are things like destroying the legitimacy of (and hence the support for) public education and destruction of teachers unions as a force both in educational policy and in politics.

Education is essential if we are to remain a liberal democracy. It is one of the few ways we can empower all of our citizens to something beyond a dependence on the whims of corporations whose sole purpose is maximizing their profits. Education should prepare people for a future that is more than merely for the workforce, but also for civil society, for the body politic, for the future of America.

We have come 55 years since the Brown decision was issued. We have not yet come close to fulfilling the promise contained in Warren’s sweeping opinion. Despite the unanimity of the Court in 1954, we have never achieved a consensus on the purposes of public education, nor do we have a willingness to make the commitment necessary to achieve the promise of the right to a high quality public education.

Perhaps pursuing a federal Constitutional Amendment is the only way of refocusing our attention as a nation to what Brown was supposed to help us achieve. Certainly the public discussion that would ensue from exploring that option would benefit the nation, whether or not we ever ratify such a proposal.

Warren wrote in Brown that

To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.

Allowing clearly inferior educational opportunities, even if nominally not done specifically on racial grounds, nevertheless still has the same impact. Students are not idiots – they quickly realize that the inferiority of their facilities, in some cases teachers, and in many cases quality of instruction indicates that society does not truly care about them despite the rhetoric about leaving no child behind, of overcoming the disparity that is apparent when we look even at gross indicators like test scores. Their hearts and minds are still battered by the inequity a continuing part of the experience of far too many children of lesser economic circumstances. They may be children of color in inner cities. They may be whites in economically distressed rural communities. They are often children in schools on the reservations in which many Native Americans still grow up.

Regardless of race or location, when we do not offer them a high quality education, we betray the basic principles of our Constitutional system and give lie to the promise of the Brown decision.

Fifty-five years. We have come somewhat. We have not come far enough.

Peace.

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Tags: Brown v Board of Education Segregation

Why We’re Still ‘At Risk’ – The Legacy of Five Faulty Assumptions

April 21st, 2009

I claim no credit for the title, which comes from this Education Week piece by Ronald Wolk, who was a co-founder of The Chronicle of Higher Education and founder of Education Week, and is chairman of Editorial Projects in Education, which puts out both Education Week and Teacher Magazine. The piece appeared online yesterday, and will be in print tomorrow. And it is as cogent as anything I have read on the problems with how we make education policy in this country. You will have to register to read the article, and as a non-subscriber will only be able to read for free two articles a week, but this is worth one of the two of your allotment. Consider:

After nearly 25 years of intensive effort, we have failed to fix our ailing public schools and stem the “rising tide of mediocrity” chronicled in 1983 in A Nation at Risk. This is mainly because the report misdiagnosed the problem, and because the major assumptions on which current education policy-and most reform efforts-have been based are either wrong or unrealistic.

Wolk considers the people running public eduation and leading the “reform” movement “knowledgeable, dedicated, and experienced” but argues that they

are so committed to a strategy of standards-based accountability that different ideas are marginalized or stifled completely.

One could write a book about each of the five major assumptions on which education policy rests, but in this limited space, a few brief paragraphs will have to suffice.

Let’s list the five key assumptions upon which he says education policy is based. I will list in bold italics the assumptions as he pens them, and for each offer the final statement he offers on each in a brief blockquote.

Assumption One: The best way to improve student performance and close achievement gaps is to establish rigorous content standards and a core curriculum for all schools-preferably on a national basis.

The issue is not whether standards are necessary. Schools without standards are unacceptable. Society should indeed hold high expectations for all students, but those expectations should reflect the values of the family and society-doing one’s best, obeying the rules, and mutual respect-and not simply the archaic academic demands of college-admissions offices. We should be preparing young people for life, not just for college.

Standards don’t prepare students for anything; they are a framework of expectations and educational objectives. Without the organization and processes to achieve them, they are worthless. States have devoted nearly 20 years to formulating standards to be accomplished by a conventional school model that is incapable of meeting them. We will make real progress only when we realize that our problem in education is not one of performance but one of design.

Assumption Two: Standardized-test scores are an accurate measure of student learning and should be used to determine promotion and graduation.

Except in school, people are judged by their work and their behavior. Few of the business and political leaders who advocate widespread use of standardized testing have taken a standardized test since leaving college. It is probably a safe bet that the majority of them, even after 16 years of formal education, could not pass the tests they require students to pass.

“But I took those courses years ago,” they say. “I can’t remember all that stuff.” Exactly.

A common justification for standardized testing is that it’s the best proxy for student achievement we have until something better comes along. The performance-based assessment used in many charter schools (and now statewide in Rhode Island and New Hampshire) is better.

Assumption Three: We need to put highly qualified teachers in every classroom to assure educational excellence.

If we want effective teaching, we should change the ways schools are organized and operated, and shift the teacher’s primary role from an academic instructor to an adviser, someone who helps students manage their own education.

Assumption Four: The United States should require all students to take algebra in the 8th grade and higher-order math in high school in order to increase the number of scientists and engineers in this country and thus make us more competitive in the global economy.

If the nation wants more scientists and engineers, then educators need to find ways to awaken and nourish a passion for those subjects well before high school, and then offer students every opportunity to pursue their interest as far as they wish.

Assumption Five: The student-dropout rate can be reduced by ending social promotion, funding dropout-prevention programs, and raising the mandatory attendance age.

The key to graduating is learning; the key to learning is motivation. There are innovative public schools that graduate most of their students because they personalize education, encourage students to pursue their interests and build on that enthusiasm, and offer multiple opportunities to learn instead of a one-size-fits-all education.

Wolk concludes as follows:

It is neither wise nor necessary to bet the future on a single reform strategy, especially when hundreds, perhaps thousands, of schools are demonstrating every day that there are other and more successful ways to help children learn and succeed.

But we can pursue two strategies only if we act to assure that the dominant strategy does not smother the fledgling movement in its crib.

I do not agree with all he presents in this piece. For example, in my opinion and in the opinion of far too many on the ground in Chicago, he gives Arne Duncan far too much credit for Renaissance 2010, the program Duncan used to reshape public schooling in the Windy City. The track record of that approach is not as sanguine as many would have us believe, and here I would note that Education Week has not given as many column inches to critics of that approach as I would have like to have seen.

I am also a bit critical in his framing that while he rightly talks about engendering enthusiasm for math in science by appropriate approaches in the lower grades (about which more anon) he ignores the damage that can be done to students and to our nation if we place too much focus on those subjects at the expense of other domains, including literature and the arts, historical and cultural knowledge, and preparation to be a citizen. We run a serious danger with our current obsession with math and science of producing a generation of technocrats without the ability to reflect morally, and we cheat many children of a chance to discover their true passions in fields that may not return the direct economic benefits we presume to see in science, math and technology, but without which our lives and our nation would be immeasurably less rich.

Still, despite those criticisms, this article provides the person reading it with insights that those of us who have been attempting to make a difference in education all know. There is no one path. Our overemphasis on standardized testing is limiting and destructive and really does not inform either us or those tested completely. There are other ways of assessing. Invoking interest in the early grades can be key to developing the kind of student passions we need. And we misunderstand and misapply the idea of standards.

Let me repeat one line I find key: We should be preparing young people for life, not just for college. Not only not just for college, also not just for employment in fields as we currently imagine them. Unless we inspire students to be willing to explore beyond the boxes we can currently imagine, we will stultify the creative impulse that has been at the heart of America’s genius, in science and industry to be sure, but also in the arts and politics. It is that creative impulse, too easily stultified by the kinds of approaches that have driven our educational policy in the past quarter century (since A Nation At Risk in 1983, although similar thrusts can be seen back over the past half century), that have enriched America not only financially but also in our willingness to take on societal inequities as we saw in the New Deal and the Great Society. As one born in 1946 who lived through the latter, it was the willingness of people to imagine a world different than the one which was given to them that challenged America to be different: think of the young people whose commitment fueled the Civil Rights movement as just one example of this.

Read the entire piece by Wolk. Let it provoke your own thoughts. Go beyond what he says – he would never claim to have all wisdom on the subject.

And remember these two points. First, Wolk says of the business leaders who seem so insistent on our current approach to standards and testing It is probably a safe bet that the majority of them, even after 16 years of formal education, could not pass the tests they require students to pass. My adolescent students are well aware of that, and our testing regimen makes them cynical. Do we really want to be inculcating cynicism as part of our educational process? Second, If we want effective teaching, we should change the ways schools are organized and operated, and shift the teacher’s primary role from an academic instructor to an adviser, someone who helps students manage their own education. Ultimately one key part of the job of teacher is to empower those who pass through our care to learn how to learn on their own. That is far more important than any single fact or formula we manage to have them absorb. Yes, we need to teach them the different ways through which we currently organize knowledge, but should also recognize that they may come up with better ways to do so, for themselves and for society as a whole, but only if we are willing to let them take risks, to try new things and new ways of perceiving.

I read Wolk’s piece late last night. I pondered it for a while. When I arose this morning, I decided there was nothing more important that I could do for public education today than to make the piece more widely known.

Well, almost nothing more important. The most important thing I can do is what I do every school day – head off to my classroom determined to empower all of the students who come through my care.

What will you do?

Peace.

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Posted in Kenneth Bernstein

Tags: Dropout Rate Education Week Standards STEM Teacher Certification teaching Testing

Mayoral control is NOT the answer

April 13th, 2009

Now that I can post here directly, I thought I would go back and share this diary which was posted at Daily Kos this past Saturday
I was not a supporter of the selection of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education, but I was willing to withhold judgment, to see where he would attempt to take the nation in education policy. I thought perhaps policy might be made in the White House, with him serving as the public face. I was wrong. Duncan is attempting to drive education in ways that will destructive. Many of the policies he is pushing demonstrate his fundamental lack of understanding.

Today I will briefly explore the issue of mayoral control of big city school systems. Remember, such is Duncan’s experience in years in Chicago. He started as an assistant to Paul Vallas in a system controlled directly by Mayor Richie Daley, succeeding him in that position for a number of years before being tapped by his basketball buddy, the new President, to head our national educational efforts.

In this exploration I am going to rely on an op ed in yesterdays New York Times entitled Mayor Bloomberg’s Crib Sheet, by Diane Ravitch.

Diane Ravitch is currently a research professor of education at New York University. One of her books is The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973. Trained as an educational historian, she served as Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander from 1991 to 1993, where she was responsible for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education. As Assistant Secretary, she led the federal effort to promote the creation of state and national academic standards. She holds positions as a senior researcher simultaneously at Hoover and at Brookings. She has become an outspoken critic of No Child Left Behind. While I do not always agree with her, I consider her a friend. And before we start with her op ed, I have to put you on notice: she is NOT a fan of Duncan, having recently described him as “Margaret Spellings in drag.”

Ravitch begins by noting Duncan’s call for mayors to take control of the nation’s school and of his pointing at New York City as an example. She then writes

Actually, the record on mayoral control of schools is unimpressive. Eleven big-city school districts take part in the federal test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Two of the lowest-performing cities — Chicago and Cleveland — have mayoral control. The two highest-performing cities — Austin, Tex., and Charlotte, N.C. — do not.

Stop for a moment, remember that Chicago has had mayoral control of its schools since Paul Vallas was put in place by Daley in 1995, with Duncan succeeding him in 2001. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is considered the best single, independent measure of school performance we have. Let me quote from the linked Wikipedia article to provide a bit of context:

NAEP conducts assessments periodically in mathematics, reading, writing, science, and other areas.[1] New assessments in world history and in foreign language are anticipated in 2012.[2]
NAEP is administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a division of the US Department of Education.
Since NAEP assessments are administered uniformly to all participating students using the same test booklets and identical procedures across the nation, NAEP results serve as a common metric for all states and selected urban districts that take the assessment. The assessment stays essentially the same from year to year, with only carefully documented changes. NAEP reports all results at the national level and provides state results for some assessments. On a trial basis, NAEP is releasing the results for a number of large urban districts.
NAEP results are based on representative samples of students at grades 4, 8, and 12 for the main assessments, or samples of students at ages 9, 13, or 17 years for the long-term trend assessments. These grades and ages were chosen because they represent critical junctures in academic achievement. NAEP provides data on subject-matter achievement, instructional experiences, and school environment for populations of students (e.g., all fourth-graders) and groups within those populations (e.g., female students, Hispanic students). NAEP does not provide scores for individual students or schools, although state NAEP can report results for selected large urban districts.

Educational researchers consider the main NAEP the best single indicator of educational performance over time. There is somewhat less confidence in the accuracy of what is known as state NAEP, especially since participation became mandatory in 2001 with the passage of No Child Left Behind. State NAEP scores provide a check on claims by states for improvement on their own state assessments, those state assessments being used to determine Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB.

Two quick comments about what NAEP has shown before we return to Ravitch. First, an examination of NAEP scores completely destroys the idea of any Texas miracle in education during the 6 years G. W. Bush was governor – and remember, it was that Texas miracle that was used to sell the nation on NCLB. The Nation’s Report Card, as NAEP is sometimes described, showed no improvement for Texas in the 1990s, and has shown little improvement in the 6+ years since NCLB went into effect. Second, Duncan spent 7 years in charge of Chicago schools in a system of mayoral control that predated him by another 6 years. Vallas was cited by Clinton for raising test scores, but (a) the scores that were raised were a selective set of Illinois tests, not consistent across all of the state tests, and the city showed little progress on NAEP. As we return of Ravitch remember her point – that of the 11 urban districts participating in NAEP for separate scoring, the two lowest scoring were under mayoral control while the two highest were not. And Chicago, after 13+ years of mayoral control, including more than 7 under Duncan, was at the bottom.

I cited the one book by Ravitch because writing it provided her with probably more knowledge about the history of schools in New York City than anyone else in the country. Diane was trained as an educational historian, and IIRC, her dissertation was supervised by perhaps the greatest historian of education we have had, Lawrence Cremins. While I will sometimes disagree with the conclusions she draws, she is a solid researcher on educational history. When evidence proves her previous ideas to be inaccurate, she will acknowledge and correct them, as she is doing in the book on which she is currently working.

Duncan recently came to New York to urge renewal of the state statute, passed in 2002, that gives the mayor control of the schools in New York City. That law expires at the end of this school year. Ravitch points out two key things to know about NYC schools

1. Mayoral control is nothing new: “From 1873 to 1969, the mayor appointed every single member of the Board of Education. The era of decentralization from 1969 to 2002 was an aberration, because the mayor had only two appointees on a seven-member board.”

2. The control over schools Bloomberg currently has is unrivaled in the city’s history, with previous mayors respecting the independence of school board members they appointed. By contrast, “The present version of the board, the Panel on Education Policy, serves at the pleasure of the mayor and rubber-stamps the policies and spending practices of the Department of Education, which is run by Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.”

Let me deviate from Ravitch a bit. One of the ironies of mayoral control has been the pattern of appointing people to run schools who really lack the background as professional educators one might expect. I teach in Maryland. A superintendent must meet certain qualifications in order to head one of our 24 school divisions (23 counties and the City of Baltimore). One of those requirements is a doctorate in education, although that State Superintendent can waive some of the requirements (and Superintendent Nancy Grasmick, who herself started as a teacher, has done so). Ever since Seattle experienced some success with hiring a non-educator to run their schools, mayors and governors have somehow thought such an approach was the solution to the seemingly intractable problems of urban education. But retired Maj. Gen. John Stanford was sui generis, and the success he had in Seattle has not been duplicated by similar appointments, whether of Generals (Julius Becton in DC), former Governors (Roy Romer in Los Angeles), financial managers (Paul Vallas in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans), or lawyers (Duncan in Chicago and Joel Klein in New York). [Michelle Rhee in DC did spend several years in a classroom with Teach for America, during which time by her own admission she was a lousy teacher until near the end of her second year. Her subsequent experience was running The New Teacher Project, a non-profit that was one of many spinoffs from the TFA family. Her highest degree is a Masters in Public Policy]

Ravitch – and remember her background and her responsibilities in the US Dept of Education – examines the claims of supporter of the Bloomberg-Klein regime of spectacular improvements. They argue for approval without change of the current law. She quotes Sec. Duncan

I’m looking at the data here in front of me,” he said while in New York. “Graduation rates are up. Test scores are up … By every measure, that’s real progress.”

Except that claim is unsupported by independent measures:

On the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress — widely acknowledged as the gold standard of the testing industry — New York City showed almost no academic improvement between 2003, when the mayor’s reforms were introduced, and 2007. There were no significant gains for New York City’s students — black, Hispanic, white, Asian or lower-income — in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade reading or eighth-grade mathematics. In fourth-grade math, pupils showed significant gains (although the validity of this is suspect because an unusually large proportion — 25 percent — of students were given extra time and help). The federal test reported no narrowing of the achievement gap between white students and minority students.

When supporters of the Klein regime try to point to scores on state tests, which have improved, Ravitch responds:

indeed, the state scores have soared in recent years, not only in the city but also across New York state However, the statewide scores on the N.A.E.P. are as flat as New York City’s. Our state tests are, unfortunately, exemplars of grade inflation.

She also points out how other measures, such as graduation rates reported by the city schools, do not indicate improvement:

The city says the rate climbed to 62 percent from 53 percent between 2003 and 2007; the state’s Department of Education, which uses a different formula, says the city’s rose to 52 percent, from 44 percent. Either way, the city’s graduation rate is no better than that of Mississippi, which spends about a third of what New York City spends per pupil.

Moreover, the city’s graduation rates have been pumped up with a variety of dubious means, like “credit recovery,” in which students who fail a course can get full credit if they agree to take a three-day makeup program or turn in an independent project. In addition, the city counts as graduates the students who dropped out and obtained a graduate-equivalency degree.

Let me step back for a moment. First, remember the requirement of NCLB to participate in NAEP. This was required precisely to serve as a check on state’s manipulating their own tests to “show improvement.” One can establish a first year cut score (the raw score which represents passing) to show a low pass rate, then lower the cut score to show” “improvement” even if the raw scores have not changed. I experienced that in the one year I taught middle school in Virginia. The year before I arrived our school had a 58% pass rate on middle school American History. The year I was there, with the other two teachers being first year teachers and me being new to the curriculum, our pass rate was 81%, which seems to be a spectacular improvement. Except that the cut scores were changed to have a more acceptable passing rate – if we had restated the previous year’s scores according to the new pass rate, it would have been about 71-72% – we improved, but not that much. And of course, we were comparing two different cohorts of students.

The manipulation of graduation rates is a well-known phenomenon. We saw it in Texas during the tenure of Gov. Bush, especially in Houston under Rod Paige. Students would be held back, sometimes more than once, in th grade (because the Texas tests were in 10th grade), until they dropped out, then they would not be listed as a drop out if you could get them to say they might go eventually for a GED, instead being listed as transferring to an alternative educational program. All this was in this professional literature in work by Walt Haney BEFORE NCLB was passed into law near the beginning of Bush’s first term.

Let’s return to Ravitch. She notes that the NY figures do not include as dropouts those listed as discharged during their hs years:

Some discharges are legitimate, like students who moved to another school district. But many others are so-called push-outs, students who were ejected from school even though they had a legal right to be there, often because their grades and test scores were bringing down their schools’ averages. The Department of Education refuses to disclose how many students are in each of these categories. We do know, however, that more than one-fifth of the members of the class of 2007, or 18,524 students, were discharged and not counted as dropouts.

One point to bear in mind is that Ravitch is not totally opposed to some level of mayoral involvement in the governance of schools. She is opposed to the model one sees in NYC, in which there is no oversight of the actions taken by the mayor and his designee, and hence no public participation in s school governance. She is willing to have the mayor appoint the members of the Board of Education for fixed terms,

Candidates for the board should be evaluated by a blue-ribbon panel so that no mayor can stack it with friends. That board should appoint the chancellor, and his or her first responsibility must be to the children and their schools, not to the mayor.

What a remarkable idea – the head of the school system has as first responsibility the children. If one returns to the history of Paul Vallas, for example, one finds him finishing second in 2001 (to Blagojevich and ahead of Burris) for the Democratic nominee for Governor of Illinois, has since considered running again in 2010 and has announced that he plans to run this year for the Cook County Board as a Republican. Reasonable people might well question his dedication to the children that should have been his primary responsibility.

Ravitch believes that school boards need to make their decision in public, subject to public scrutiny. She further advocates for some level of parental control, writing

Local school boards composed of parent leaders should oversee the schools in their districts, although they should not have any financial authority.

She wants independent auditing to evaluate claims of improvements in test scores and graduation rates. The current New York law has none of these features. Instead all power resides within the hands of a chancellor / ceo, Joel Klein, who is answerable only to the mayor. So far that model has not proven successful, and yet that is what Duncan wants to propagate across the nation, perhaps because that is his own personal experience, an experience which has not shown positive results.

If our schools are truly public schools, they should be answerable to the public. Their governance should be democratic. The model of mayoral control, especially as implemented in New York City, meets neither of these criteria. By itself that should be sufficient reason to reject that model of governance. The model is further undercut by the lack of success that can be demonstrated by independent evaluation, not only in New York, but also in Chicago under the leadership of Duncan and of his predecessor.

Let me offer the final paragraph penned by Ravitch in this piece:

Not every school problem can be solved by changes in governance. But to establish accountability, transparency and the legitimacy that comes with public participation, the Legislature should act promptly to restore public oversight of public education. As we all learned in civics class, checks and balances are vital to democracy.

checks and balances are vital to democracy – we have just escaped from an 8 year administration that did not believe it should be subject to checks and balances, and we came close to destroying our economy and our international standing as a result of actions taken without such checks and balances. If nothing else, we should have learned that no public function can be trusted to people who are not subject to checks and balances. Our public schools should be preparing our children not only to be employed, but to be participating citizens in a representative liberal democracy. The model of governance advocated by Duncan is opposed to that. By itself that should be sufficient reason to reject it. And it does not work, as both his experience in Chicago and the tenure of Joel Klein in New York demonstrate.

Peace.

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Tags: Arne Duncan Diane Ravitch Education mayoral control Michael Bloomberg Paul Vallas

Grading Education, Getting Accountability Right

April 13th, 2009

(by Kenneth J. Bernstein aka teacherken, originally posted at the Daily Kos)

If you send two groups of students to equally high-quality schools, the group with greater socioeconomic disadvantage will necessarily have lower average achievement than the more fortunate group. . .

Low-income children often have no health insurance and therefore no routine preventive medical and dental care, so have more school absences as a result of illness. Children in low-income families are more prone to asthma, resulting in more sleeplessness, irritability, and lack of exercise. They experience lower birth weight as well as more lead poisoning and iron-deficiency anemia, each of which leads to diminished cognitive ability and more behavior problems. Their families frequently fall behind in rent and move, so children switch schools more often, losing continuity of instruction. . .

The words are of Richard Rothstein, formerly the principal education writer of The New York Times, and co-author of an important new book on educational assessment. They come from an interview he and his co-authors recently did. In this diary I will explore the interview as well as offer commentary of my own.

The title of the book is Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right. The cu-authors are Rothstein, Rebecca Jacobsen, and Tamara Wilder, and is co-published by Teacher4s College Press and the Economic Policy Institute. The interview appeared on the website of Education News, which while it is run by someone whose personal orientation towards education is quite different than my own, often provides links for important news about education.

I have not yet read the book. It is in my queue. But I know enough about Rothstein’s work from previous reading, both while he was at the Times and of earlier books, to know the cogency with which he approaches our crises in education. I believe that the interview can stand on its own as an introduction to a different approach about assessment.

Let’s be clear. We have to have assessment that includes some evaluation from outside the classroom or the school – given the amount of tax revenue (the authors say almost 15% of all American taxes) that goes to public education, such assessment for accountability is not only unavoidable, it should be welcomed – if done properly. Our approach under NCLB, however, is not proper, gives us a distorted picture of what is happening, narrows instruction to what is tested, and thus damages the education of the students it purports to help.

All of this has been known in educational circles for years, well before the push to NCLB in the early part of this decade. Let me offer some commentary from the three authors.

Let’s start with Jacobsen:

Our current accountability systems focus narrowly on standardized test scores in reading and mathematics. This test-based accountability system has only resulted in a corruption of the goals of public education. It has created incentives to focus only on reading and math instruction at the expense of other important goals, including not only other academic subjects such as science and social studies, but also other skills which are less easily tested through a paper and pencil exam, such as students’ ability work cooperatively in groups, develop a commitment to civic and community responsibility, and develop an appreciation for the arts and literature.

A concern about such narrowing is not new. Rothstein reminds us:

. . . we describe a commission led by Nelson Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger that issued a 1958 report denouncing excessive stress on tests of math and reading. The report insisted that “Our conception of excellence must embrace many kinds of achievement at many levels….There is excellence in abstract intellectual activity, in art, in music, in managerial activities, in craftsmanship, in human relations, in technical work.” And the report urged that test scores not be the sole mechanism of school accountability. It said, “Decisions based on test scores must be made with the awareness of the imponderables in human behavior. We cannot measure the rare qualities of character that are a necessary ingredient of great performance. We cannot measure aspiration or purpose. We cannot measure courage, vitality or determination.”

I include this snippet because of the date of the report: in October of 1957 the USSR launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. Those old enough to remember will recall the panic it caused, that we were falling behind a rival (at that time a military rival) and we had to respond. This lead to a heavy emphasis on science at math. The report presented cautions that unfortunately were not taken seriously. If one sees parallels with, say, A Nation at Risk in 1983, with fears of falling behind economically, or current pushes seemingly demanding more emphasis on math and science, you are not alone.

The authors do not totally reject the idea that one important function of public education is to prepare people to be productive in the workforce – after all, remember that one co-publisher is the Economic Policy Institute. But that goal cannot be seen in isolation, and we need to be very careful about making major changes in our schools based on economic projections that are tenuous as best. In the paragraph immediately following the one just quoted, Rothstein notes

the work-related skills now required of school graduates are different from those of the 1950s, but also not as different as many people think. In an appendix of Grading Education, we reprint an article I co-authored with Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, in which we showed that, contrary to popular belief, American schools currently produce enough high school and college graduates to fill openings in the technologically advanced jobs of the modern era. Of course, we argue, our schools have an obligation to educate every child to his or her maximum potential, and we are not presently doing so, but we should not use flawed economic projections as a basis for denouncing the performance of our public schools.

Jacobsen recites the goals that education should include:

Throughout history, American leaders have generally agreed that schools should assist students in developing knowledge and skills in a broad range of goal areas, including: 1) basic academic knowledge and skills; 2) critical thinking; 3) appreciation for the arts and literature; 4) preparation for skilled work; 5) social skills and work ethic; 6) citizenship and community responsibility; 7) physical health; emotional health.

and notes when they authors surveyed a representative group of educational leaders and the public, they found that

while teaching basic academic skills is important, it is not so much more important that we should be satisfied if other goals were sacrificed. Consequently, in Grading Education, we propose an accountability system in which schools would be held accountable for student achievement in all of these eight areas. Only with such an accountability system, can we avoid the goal distortion that results from accountability only for a few basic skills. Our proposals include an expanded federal data collection system, covering both standardized tests and performance assessments.

Ironically, there is a U. S. precedent for such an approach in the early development of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP):

Unlike today’s NAEP exam which is almost exclusively a paper and pencil exam, early NAEP also collected data using survey and interview questions, and observations of student behaviors. With the exception of the arts and music exam in 1997, however, such performance assessments were eliminated by the federal government in the
1970s.

The authors note that previously NAEP required things such as writing a letter of application in response to a help-wanted ad, or how they would respond if they saw a park attendant acting in a racially discriminatory fashion or evaluating the calorie consequences of food choices – think how important a real world skill the last is at a time when our childhood obesity is exploding, with concomitant pressures on health and medical costs, as well as time lost from school and from work.

Currently NAEP, which is still the best standard by which to compare the results among NAEP, has the unfortunate result of downgrading US performance because of how it sets its proficiency levels. As Wilder notes of the Lake Wobegon demand that all children be proficient as measured by some state established standard and cross-checked by NAEP),

the law does demand that all students in each state pass a single challenging standard. This guideline comes from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) definition of proficiency as “demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter.” However, there are no countries in the world, even the highest performing countries, in which all students are able to reach a challenging standard. In Grading Education we demonstrate this fact by predicting how students in Korea and Singapore—the top scoring countries on international math assessments— would score on the United States’ NAEP. We found that over 25 percent of students in Singapore and Korea would score below the 8th grade NAEP proficiency cut score in math. It is impossible for all U.S. students to reach a challenging level of proficiency by 2014 or by any year.One standard cannot be challenging to most and achievable by all.

The authors recommend an assessment program that, while still including tests and other quantitative measures, would also include the qualitative data that comes from expert evaluation

…expert evaluations of schools and student work, conducted on a regular cycle. Even the most sophisticated test questions are not fully adequate to reveal students’ abilities. Therefore, mandatory school evaluations should be conducted by professional inspectors to inform the public about how well schools are progressing towards the eight goals described above. Inspectors should observe lessons in every classroom, meet with members of the school community, shadow students selected at random and observe daily school and classroom practices. Observations would enable inspectors to make concrete recommendations based on their expert knowledge, and subsequent inspections could evaluate a school’s progress in addressing areas identified as in need of improvement. Schools deemed in need of great improvement should be visited more frequently and schools meeting or exceeding standards could be visited less often. The
reports of inspectors should be made available to the public, and if schools repeatedly fail to make the necessary changes to ensure student progress towards the multiple goals of public education, states should intervene and replace inadequate administrators and
faculty.

Here I can speak from some experience. Maryland schools get reaccredited by a process of evaluation that includes visits from teams of educators sent out by our region, Middle States. Every teacher is observed at least twice, by two different educators with some degree of experience in the content. The building is evaluated physically, the school climate is assessed. Non-teachers are interviewed. But all of this takes place AFTER the school has engaged in a year-long process of self-evaluation, a process that includes defining a clear philosophy and set of goals, and evaluating the relationship between school and the larger community, recognizing that the education of students is not limited to what happens within the walls of our classrooms and schools. I have in the past serve as chairman of the committee that dealt with our school’s philosophy and goals and am slated to do so as we begin the process again this coming fall. Like the process of National Board Certification, where the candidate is required to examine in detail his/her teaching in light of primary goal of serving the needs of the students, this process requires a great deal of honest self-reflection. High and/or improving scores on external tests is considered insufficient. As Wilder notes, such an approach is already used elsewhere in the world:

Other countries have long known of the goal distortion that occurs when educational institutions are held accountable for only some of their many goals. Employing this knowledge in their accountability policies, many countries including England, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Scotland, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and France depend upon a system of school inspections that includes student test scores as only one indicator of performance for holding schools accountable. Although the specifics of school inspections differ from country to country, the principles are the same: employ trained professionals to visit schools to assess if their practices—curriculum, instruction, facilities, leadership, materials, etc.—are likely to graduate students who will become successful, productive citizens. In cases where inspection demonstrates deficiencies in a school’s practices, the responsible national or local agencies intervene to improve the school’s methods.

The entire interview is worth reading. What the authors offer is something far more useful than the kind of narrow focus on tests that has been consuming our educational policy for the past 8 years. The detrimental affects of such an approach should have been anticipated, given what we know about fields other than education:

For example, police commanders have sometimes given police officers ticket quotas in an attempt to ensure that policemen work effectively. Policemen respond to such quotas by issuing more traffic tickets, but this has resulted in police ignoring other important responsibilities that are more difficult to measure, such as prevention of crime by community policing. When medical services have been held accountable, for example, for easily measured reductions in infant mortality, these services may achieve such reductions by shifting resources to hospital obstetric services and away from prenatal care for pregnant women. The services reduce mortality but then have higher proportions of low birthweight and seriously disabled births, because prenatal care was de-emphasized.

I urge you to read and ponder the entire interview. Even before you read the book, you will begin to be prepared to respond to those people who insist a test-based approach to accountability is the only possible solution. We do need to make changes to our system of public education, but the path we have been following not only has not achieved the goals it ostensibly seeks, it cannot, any more than all children will be proficient by 2014. The authors will help you understand why a different approach is needed. They go further in proposing a path that would be far more effective, if only we could get policy makers to step back and look honestly at ALL of what we know about schools, assessment and evaluation.

Peace

(Note: This article was posted on behalf of the the author with direct permission. It originally appeared on the Daily Kos.)

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Posted in Kenneth Bernstein

Tags: Accountability Economic Policy Institute NAEP NCLB Rebecca Jacobson Richard Rothstein Schools Tamara Wilder Testing